Friday, December 23, 2016

Jane
Mayer’s latest book, Dark Money: The
Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, is
of course an exposé. And while I love such books, it must be said that its
usefulness is limited and it is, ultimately, unable to do what Mayer would like
it to do – disempower or defeat the billionaires whom she says have funded what
she calls “the radical right.”

Exposes
work with such phenomena as, say, child slavery, impure food and drugs, or
environmental pollution. To expose such phenomena is to defeat or to pave the
way for the defeat of them. Why? Because there is no justification for such
practices.

Exposes
don’t work, are insufficient with regard to the phenomena Mayer is addressing
in Dark Money because those she is
exposing are convinced – and have convinced others – of the justice of their
politics. As Aristotle pointed out, a very long time ago, oligarchs appeal to
justice to legitimate their claim to rule. And their appeals are not simply
baseless or merely a cover for their self-interest, although they serve in that
capacity. The claims of the wealthy few that they deserve to rule are, of
course, controversial, that is to say, partial or incomplete. But so too are
the claims of the democrats to rule. Ala’ Aristotle, all claims to rule, either
by the one, the few, or the many, are and remain controversial precisely
because they are all partial or incomplete.

So, to
expose some people as oligarchs who are seeking to rule will not accomplish
much, will not lead to their defeat in the political arena, as should be clear
by now in the U.S. And showing, as Mayer does extensively, that they use
deceit, deception, or secrecy to achieve their goals does not delegitimize
their activities. To undermine our oligarchs, our billionaires of the radical
right, as Mayer has it, requires showing how oligarchy is unjust, how oligarchs
practice injustice rather than justice.

This is
where Mayer comes up short, which is why her expose’ becomes repetitive rather
than enlightening. Again and again, Mayer exposes the doings of the her billionaires
of the radical right, as if people did not know that our political order today
was screwing them over. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind
is blowing and we don’t actually need an expose’ to know that we, the many, are
being screwed over by our government. What we need is a politics that revolves
around questions of justice, not around questions of increasing the nation’s
wealth and power. For the pursuit of wealth and power, as the most important
political goals, legitimates oligarchy and the rule of oligarchs, while marginalizing
the pursuit of justice, especially where the many are concerned. A politics of justice, not a politics of
wealth and power or a politics of greatness, is what is most needed now.

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

There is a
strange kind of logic going around reflected by the question: Did those who
voted for third parties cost Clinton the election? That this is strange logic
can be seen by asking instead: How or why did Clinton cost the Democratic Party
the election?

The second
question, which is from a party standpoint the appropriate one, is underlined
by the fact that many, in fact, very many Democratic voters chose to stay home,
chose not to vote for Clinton. And this represents many more voters than those
who chose to vote for third parties. Clinton, quite obviously, did not appeal
to a great number of Democratic voters, and especially did not appeal to
Democratic voters in states where the election was close and Trump won by a
relatively slim margin, e.g., Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

The onus,
given these numbers on non-voters, does or should fall on Clinton and the
Democrats to understand why they failed and why they lost the election. To say
that it was those who chose to vote for third party candidates is to imply that
they bear the burden of Clinton’s and Democratic Party’s loss, which is, to put
it bluntly, absurd. Clinton and the Democratic Party lost the election and,
hence, they should bear the burden of their loss, not those who either chose to
vote for third party candidates or chose not to vote at all.

It is all
pretty simple. Political parties are, or allegedly are, in the business of
winning elections. When they lose, when they don’t win elections, that failure,
that loss is on the party, not on those who chose not to vote for its ticket.
The Democratic ticket in 2016 ended up a losing ticket, plain and simple. It
was the Democratic Party that created that ticket. Ergo, the Democratic Party
and its ticket are responsible for losing the election. It really is that
simple.

Friday, December 9, 2016

“Mr.
Bush joined Republican congressional leaders, veterans of his administration
and hundreds of others on Thursday to pay tribute to Mr. Cheney as his official
bust was unveiled at the Capitol.”

As
reported in the NY Times and elsewhere, a marble bust of Dick Cheney was
unveiled on December 8thin
the U.S. Senate, as is the customary practice with those who have served as
vice president. The Times also noted that “No mention was made of Mr. Cheney’s
controversial positions on waterboarding and the Iraq war.” He was praised by
former President George W. Bush and by the current vice president, Joe Biden.

And
what if this honoring is correct? That is, what if we have created a political
order and practice a kind of politics that requires that our nation and its
officials torture other human beings, even those who are innocent and even to
the point of death? I mean, many people not only oppose torturing other human
beings but also find it despicable. And while it is true that torture is
despicable, what if the success of our kind of politics requires that we do it
and, more generally, do despicable things? If that were the case, then our
officials ought to be despicable people, ought they not? After all, despicable
people have few or no qualms about doing despicable deeds, “dastardly deeds”
they might be called.

If
this makes any sense, then it helps us understand the election of Donald Trump
to the presidency, not to mention other presidents like Nixon, LBJ, or Bill
Clinton. A politics that requires for its success the commission of despicable
acts should be controlled by, governed by despicable people. And, of course,
because most human beings have been unable to “learn not to be good,” as
Machiavelli put it, or of approving those who have “learned not to be good,” it
is best to honor the despicable by labeling them, as George W. Bush did Dick
Cheney, “good [men] who love [their] country and really love [their] famil[ies].”
It is in this way that success becomes the measure by which we judge public measures
and persons and, perhaps, private measures and persons as well.

Sunday, November 27, 2016

“Bipartisan
darkness descends on the public realm [in 1980], preparation for the rule of
the Right.” [Liberty Under Siege,
Walter Karp, 139]

Or in preparation
for the rule of Trump.

It is quite
amazing how quickly in the face of a threat like the one Trump was alleged to
be that bipartisanship emerges. Obama saying, in essence, to give Trump a
chance and Joe Biden saying he will work with Vice President elect Pence. The
signs are there for those who care to see them. And it is important to
understand why this happens. So what was the threat? What is it?

The threat previously
was Trump, that is, before he won. But now the danger is that the forces that
brought Trump to the presidency will not be stilled or pacified, thereby
threatening the status quo and it protectors who reign in Washington. For there
are “forces” abroad in the land that threaten the status quo, e.g., the growing
popularity of legalizing the recreational use of marijuana. That this is a
significant threat to the status quo is not appreciated by most people because
they do not appreciate the importance of “the war on drugs” for maintaining the
prevailing establishment. That war, which is usually presented as a somewhat
marginal policy that needs some tweaking to be made more rational, is actually
as important as “the war on terror” for maintaining “the rule of the Right.”
So, to allow the war on drugs to be undermined, especially to be undermined for
the sake of individual liberty, is dangerous, even as dangerous as legitimizing
“sexual preferences” – as if one’s sexual practices were “preferences” like
one’s taste in ice cream – for the sake of personal liberty. Such “allowances” create cracks in what is
called “civilization,” cracks that imply that “civilization” – or as Huck Finn
put it, “sivilization” – is more about repressing than elevating or liberating
human kind.

This is
dangerous stuff in a regime that embraces or is built on the idea that without
a powerfully pervasive national government anarchy will prevail and human kind
will descend into darkness. So, such cracks must be sealed up as best they can
be, e.g., by legitimating “same sex marriage” so unwed gays and lesbians, those
who espouse “the gay life style,” can be viewed with suspicion. Respecting
marijuana, then, expect the emergence of “scientific” claims about the dangers
of marijuana, followed by attempts by “the Feds” to reassert control over the
use of this “drug.”

And expect
too, more broadly, that “the rule of the Right” under Trump will reinforce
those aspects of our allegedly capitalistic society that discipline “the many,”
that is, we ordinary people. For example, by elevating the very wealthy to
positions of power while emphasizing their wealth, Trump reminds the many of
their unfitness, that they are “the many” because they do not have the innate
or inbred discipline to be among “the few,” and, therefore, need to disciplined
by our pervasively powerful government and its controllers. Such people, the
many, should not be allowed to use marijuana or other drugs recreationally
because they lack the inbred discipline of “the few,” discipline in this case
to be provided by the nation’s policy of mass incarceration. These are among
the means to still or pacify a people, especially a people grown restless with
deference to its “superiors.”

So “the
bipartisan darkness” that is descending – once again – “on the public realm” is
the darkness of a “civilization” – actually a regime – that is constantly
threatened by the conviction that human beings were “created equal and endowed
by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And as Lincoln put it, these words are
”a stumbling block to those who . . . might seek to turn a
free people back into the hateful paths of despotism,” a barrier to any
potential tyrant or tyrants who would, in the name of “civilization,” make
human kind unfree and rule them without their consent.

Saturday, November 19, 2016

“The
grass-roots political activity of the citizenry and its inseparable adjunct,
the entry into political life of nonorganizational politicians, is a constant
threat to party organizations. It sparks political ambitions outside their
control. It opens new avenues to public renown. It encourages outsiders to
enter primaries and gives them a chance to win. It opens to officeholders
themselves the opportunity it win public support on their own and thus render
themselves independent of the organization. It is therefore the perpetual
endeavor of party organizations to discourage and even squash grass-roots
movements.” [Walter Karp, Indispensable
Enemies, 26]

Make no
mistake: The Republican and the Democratic parties have the same agenda when it
comes to Donald Trump, viz., controlling him or rendering him as powerless as
they can. That is, they will try to either “mainstream” him or they will
sabotage his administration. And this agenda is not the product of malevolence.
It is merely the result of self-interest.

Have you
not wondered by Obama and the Democrats have not said that they will take the
tact taken by the Republicans vis-à-vis Obama, i.e., rigid, unbending
opposition? It’s because such a strategy would inflame, aggravate those who are
actively protesting Trump’s presidency, thereby strengthening those groups and
their grass-roots political activity, activity that the party might not be able
to control. Such grass-roots activity must be “discouraged” or “squashed” in
order for the Democratic Party establishment to maintain its control of the
party, control that is, as Bernie Sanders’ candidacy indicated, is tenuous at
best.

And for
similar reasons the mainstream Republicans are doing their best to “play ball
with Trump,” and they will do so as long as the ball game is being played on
their field according to their rules. Should Trump try to change the game, as
it were, then mainstream Republicans will, by means both fair and foul, place
obstacles in Trump’s way. As we all know by now, congressional inactivity,
legislative stalemate, is anything but uncommon. Trump will learn that the
political arena is not like the business arena at all. As Harry Truman said of
Eisenhower: “Ike will say ‘do this’ or ‘do that,’ expecting it to be done, but
nothing will happen.” So too Trump will discover that our politicians are most
interested in preserving the status quo and, therewith, their own power.

“A party
organization is not like a building which, once erected, requires no further
human effort. Keeping a party organization intact requires constant and
unremitting effort in the face of perpetual and unremitting peril…. From the
point of view of a party organization, every elected official is a potential
menace.” [Karp, 22-23]

This is
especially true with the likes of Donald Trump, i.e., an elected official whose
debt to a party organization is miniscule. Trump won the election, but that is
all he won so far. And given our party organizations, that does not amount to
very much.

Sunday, November 13, 2016

The 2016
election provides a good example for debating the differences between a direct
popular election for president and using the Electoral College. Trump won the
vote in the Electoral College but lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by,
as present count, about 600,000 votes. That is a lot of votes, surpassing the
500,000 vote majority Al Gore got in 2000 when he ran against George Bush. And
why shouldn’t the popular vote decide presidential elections? What could go
wrong?

The 2016
popular vote count illustrates one feature of a direct popular election that
doesn’t get too much attention, viz., the fact that such a scheme rewards
candidates for president for amassing votes wherever they can. So, for example,
Clinton got 2.7 million more popular votes in California than did Trump, and
she got 1.5 million more popular votes in New York than Trump got. Under the
Electoral College scheme, the size of Clinton’s win in these states is
meaningless, whereas with a direct popular election makes such majorities quite
meaningful. And given that frequently our presidential elections have been
decided by much fewer than 4.2 million votes, it is possible that the election
in these two states, given such large majorities, would decide the election
nationwide. In the 34 elections since 1824, in 17 of these elections did the
winner prevail by more than 4.2 million votes.

But the
question is not only what has happened but what might happen when the electoral
scheme is changed to a direct popular election. For example, where would
Clinton have better spent her time and effort under a direct popular vote
scheme, California or North Carolina? It would have to be the former because
winning a close election in North Carolina would not be as important as
amassing as many popular votes in California or New York. Votes in closely
contested states cancel each other out as it were, while votes in one party
states are worth more insofar as they contribute more heavily to a candidate’s
popular vote total vis-à-vis that candidate’s opponent.

Would this
be a good thing or a bad thing? I don’t really know but I do know it would be
different. Maybe it would be worth a try but what is certain is that mouthing
phrases like “Let’s democratize our presidential elections” won’t answer these
questions, which it seems it would be prudent to answer before making the
change.

Saturday, November 12, 2016

George
McGovern in 1972 won the Democratic Party’s nomination for president despite
the opposition of the party’s establishment types. He could do this thanks to
reforms the Democrats made after the riots in Chicago during their national
convention that nominated Hubert Humphrey for president even though Humphrey had
avoided the Democratic primaries. Then, thanks to the same reforms and
post-Watergate, Jimmy Carter won the party’ nomination for president in 1976,
again against the wishes of the party’s establishment. And, of course, this
year Donald Trump won the Republican Party’s nomination for president against
the wishes of the party’s establishment, while Hillary Clinton won her party’s
nomination largely because of that party’s “super delegates,” who were not
elected and were intended to serve the wishes of the party’s establishment, as
they faithfully did.

One of the
most interesting and important facets of Carter’s nomination and election in 1976
is that it was not hailed by our intelligentsia as “democratic,” “popular,” or
“republican.” Newsweek wrote that
“Americans [are] sunk in malaise,” while the NY Times predicted the gloomiest of times as the nation lacked a
“cause…to quicken [the people’s] energies and national pride…as though the
national compass had been lost.”

As one
author put it: “The democratic awakening [was] a spiritual disease.” Barbara Tuchman, eminent historian, wrote that
“the idea of democracy survives in disenchantment…battered and whipped.” Daniel
Bell, eminent social scientist, feared that popular participation in politics
was a threat to “constitutional democracy.” Henry Kissinger was said to be
depressed, while President Ford was deeply distressed because there was, he
said, a “crisis of authority.” As our author put it: “When millions of
Americans have a voice in the choice of a candidate, the result is elitist.
When a handful of party potentates do the choosing…democracy in America
thrives.”

Trust me:
The same phenomenon will follow, has followed Trump’s victory in our latest
presidential election. And it will follow because “the shaken political
establishment has no wish to praise the awakened democracy; it expects to bury
it at the first opportunity.” According to our intelligentsia, once the
political establishment is weakened, it is fair to say that the people have
become a mob and must be denied. And because Trump lost the popular vote, this
campaign will pretend to be democratically driven, as did the opposition to
Carter and McGovern, even though its goal is to re-legitimize what is clearly a
de-legitimized elite. And this is evidenced by the fact that no one who
supports democratizing the electoral college has a word to say against how
Hillary Clinton won the nomination. This is important because, as with the old
adage, “I care not who makes the laws so long as I can interpret them,” so too
it may be said that “I care not how
the people elect a president so long as I can control who gets nominated to run.”

So, if the
past is any indication, prepare for a reaction against democratic or popular
government or political processes, just as happened in the 70’s and led to the
election of – and bipartisan embrace of – Ronald Reagan, which embrace became
apparent when, unlike the response to Nixon’s lawlessness, Reagan’s lawlessness
was covered up, covered over so the “Gipper” would not be impeached and removed
from office and his “movie” would end happily as he faded, both mentally and
physically, from the scene. Some will
find such a prospect reassuring, but the Trump phenomenon is the promise that
has always been endemic to the “Reagan Reaction,” as both Trump and Reagan were
committed to “making America great again.” McGovern and Carter offered us and
even won some degree of popular approval for a different kind of politics, but
our establishment, both Republicans and Democrats, rejected and sabotaged it,
and did so with great success.

So the
question might be: Where do we go from here? The establishment will seek to
undermine Trump but has nothing substantive to offer in its place except more
of the same. It merely wants its power back. “Order” and “civility” will be
restored while our republic will, once again, become an oligarchy where the few
will prosper while the many will not. It is a story as old as the Constitution
itself.

“Hurt
laughed. ‘That’s not competition. It’s supposed to look that way, so people
think their interests are being looked after, that they have a choice, that
they can make a difference, that they’re in charge. But they don’t.’”

“That
doesn’t make sense.”

“I’m afraid
it does. You see, there’s more money to be made in cooperation than in
competition. It’s the same dynamic that leads to cartels. You can argue that
cartels should be competing. But they don’t see it that way. Their profit
motive enables them to rise above the urge to compete. In the service of the
greater good, naturally. People who think there is actual friction, and real
competition, between Democrats and Republicans or between the press and
politicians, or between the corporations and their supposed overseers, they’re
like primitives looking at shadows on the wall and believing the shadows are
the substance.”

Of course,
the reference here to shadows on the wall is to Plato’s Republic and his allegory of the cave. In that allegory, Socrates
represents life for human beings as like life in a cave, where there is a fire
behind the many humans and other humans who project images or shadows onto a
wall that the many humans take to be real. The philosopher is the one who
climbs out the cave, sees the sun lit world, and realizes that what most humans
believe to be real are merely shadows on a wall.

It is
necessary to make one emendation to what Hurt says, namely, that Plato knew that
this phenomenon of mistaking shadows for reality was not a “primitive”
phenomenon. In fact, one could speculate that those we label “primitives” would
be less likely to mistake shadows for reality than those who we label
“civilized” for the simple reason that such behavior would be far more
dangerous in primitive than in civilized conditions. Those who chase or react
to shadows would be more likely to overlook real and immediate dangers, “clear
and present dangers” as some like to say.

In fact,
“civilization” could be one of those shadows on the wall, something that is
more evident to the likes of a Huck Finn than the likes of a Tom Sawyer. Tom
pursues and achieves what we call “success,” that is, wealth, fame, and the
best looking girl in town, while Huck ultimately has “to light out for the
territories” in order to be content. Huck won’t be “sivilized,” as he puts it,
because that means wearing shoes, not smoking, attending church, and abiding by
the likes of Aunt Polly. It’s just not
for him. And we can ask: Who is pursuing a shadow, Huck or Tom?

Of course,
the more relevant aspect to these passages concerns our political order. Is our
alleged two party system a shadow on the wall or is it real? And if it is
merely a shadow on the wall, what is the reality that that shadow covers over?
It could be something like the cartels that Hurt talks about or it could be the
collusion that some have noticed in the behavior of our “two” parties. And it
doesn’t seem unimportant to figure this out.

Monday, October 3, 2016

The fear of
a Donald Trump presidency illustrates as well as anything can the infantile
character of American politics these days. It is to act like infants to think
that our political order is incapable of “handling” Trump when it handled LBJ,
Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and even Ronald Reagan, not to mention Woodrow
Wilson.

It is also infantile
to appeal to Hillary Clinton as an alternative to Trump: “Oh mother, oh mother,
please protect us from that big, bad bully, Donald Trump.”

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

This is an email exchange with a former colleague and friend that seemed interesting to me.

Paul wrote: >

> Hey, what are you up to? Campaigning for Trump
down in that swing state; maybe you are throwing your weight behind Clinton. It
strikes me that there are two Presidential candidates that you would love.

>

My freshman
honors seminar is in revolt right now because I give open-book vocab quizzes on
the assigned reading. If you look up a word, write down the definition in the
margin or on paper, then you can use it for the quiz. The find this very nerve
wracking. No joke.

>

> All the best, Paul

I wrote:

On Sun, Sep 25, 2016 at 1:37 AM, Peter Schultz wrote:

To my favorite former Assumption College philosophy
professor:

I have already voted via absentee ballot cause I know
the Republicans in N.C. will do all they can to make voting in person a miserable
time. But it doesn’t matter one whit as Trump is merely around to
re-legitimize the establishment, which is about as inane and delusional as it
is possible to be. It’s really funny how “Trump hysteria” has even made some
people say, “Bush II looks good now.” And Obama? What a lie he has turned out
to be.

We are presently in Montana and will be doing
Yellowstone and Glacier National park for the next week. Retire, or as I like
to say, “QUIT!”, as soon as you can. "Work if for suckers," as a good
friend likes to put it. Spent two weeks in July with friends in Ireland playing
links golf. Wonderful. Since then, I have had one round in the 80’s and the
rest in the 70’s. A few months ago, I shot my age, a 69, one under par at
Tanglewood. There is nothing like year round golf. And reading whatever I want.
I only wish I had discovered some of this stuff while at Assumption as I could
have really made Mahoney - and probably Gallager - nuts!

Yeah, our young, like the rest of us, are quite unable
to cope with anything that jolts their/our comfortable lives. It struck me some
time ago how our young, whom we so much like to disparage, are really little
more than reflections of ourselves.

I use to get revolts in class whenever I proposed
mandatory national service, military or civilian, their choice, after high
school for a year or two. I loved it. And in this too they, the young, are just
like the rest of us. Stand for our national anathema? Required. Serve your
country? Optional. And I would love to witness the response of many parents of
the young now if they were confronted with a draft. “What? You want my child to
defend the republic against those jihadis? Are you insane?” You can’t make this
stuff up.

But I am not worried because after our second Clingon
presidency, all will be well with the world! Believe it! The bitch will nail
those oh so evil Muslims and corral the greed on Wall Street. But I shouldn’t
be so hard on those supporting Clingon II: After all, it makes perfect sense
for well off white people to vote for her. It’s only the people in Kansas who
are confused, I guess.

Let the games begin.

Peter

Paul wrote:

I had a retirement assessment done recently--maybe
when I am 65, but likely 70.

Read Ghettoland by Jill Leovy. It really nails the
dynamics of race and police without the blame game. Best read I've had in
years. --Paul

p.s. I will be teaching an Ethics course--if
everything goes right--at MCI Framingham, a medium-security women's prison,
next semester.

I wrote:

For “Ghettoside”: NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE
AWARD FINALIST • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The
New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post • The Boston Globe • The
Economist • The Globe and Mail • BookPage • Kirkus Reviews

Well, if all of these mainstream media organs
loved it, it has to be filled with conventional wisdom to the brim. I will be
sure to read it when I can. I am sure it will be as enlightening as I find
the NY Times and Washington Post and Boston Globe these days. 😈

Paul wrote:

Don't let the populraity fool you. It seems the height
of conventionality to reject something because certain people or groups accept
or reject it. You can read the Introduction to REBEL NATION (don't read the
entire book; it is overwritten--an article turned into a book) in order to get
the American fascination with "being different from the mainstream"
or "thinking outside the box" or being "unconventional"
Indeed being unconventional is the most conventional of American conceits.

Leovy's book is filled with questions not answers. I
am sure the Globe can isolate what they want, but the book is superb. --P

I wrote:

Thank you so much for educating me as to the meaning being
unconventional, but I have thought it had something to do with what one was
actually thinking, not whether one was “thinking outside the box,” to use a
phrase that is meant to marginalize those who are being unconventional. I mean
to describe Nietzsche as thinking “outside the box' seems an excellent way of
dismissing Nietzsche rather than taking him seriously. “How quaint! Friedrich
was ’thinking outside the box.’ Now that I understand that I don’t have to
worry about what he thought.” Again, to say that Malcolm X was “thinking
outside the box” is a way of marginalizing his thought. Which leads me to ask:
If unconventional thinking is so “American,” how come so many who were or are
unconventional are marginalized as they are, e.g., by being described as
“thinking outside the box?”

Such a description is merely a way of dismissing someone, not
engaging with them, which in my experience in academe is how an awful lot of
academics respond to those who don’t accept their arguments.

But to remind you of what I actually said, not what you say I said:
I said I would read “Ghettoside” when I can but was not expecting it to be
anymore enlightening than the media that has endorsed it, ala’ the NY Times,
the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, all of which are “big house newspapers”
that merely serve to underwrite the status quo. Nor do I expect much from a
book that may be accurately described as “not playing the blame game,” as you
put it. How any one can confront "the dynamics of race and police” without
blame seems incomprehensible to me. Just that phrase, “the dynamics of race and
police” has all the makings of an obfuscation that serves to perpetuate the
status quo, that is, the racism that pervades our society and our
establishment, from left to right.

“When violent people are permitted to operate with impunity, they get
their way,” Leovy tells us. “That’s what the criminal justice system is
for.” Who is she writing about here? The police or blacks? My bet, she is
writing about blacks. Nice example of “dog whistle” racism embedded in the
phrase, “violent people.” What if those “violent people” were described as
those “oppressed people?” Hmmm, that’s a different phenomenon altogether, isn’t
it?

Again, from the Washington Post review: "It [the book] should
show why making policing more effective — while, yes, doing far less collateral
damage — is an absolute necessity for helping those neighborhoods find safety
and justice. When, to take one extreme, the Young, Gifted and Black Coalition
in Madison, Wis., calls for the police to withdraw from the community and says
that the method of interaction they want with the police is “no interaction,” we should see both why that
is understandable and why it is deeply, deeply wrong.”

I love how the reviewer throws in, almost as an afterthought “while,
yes, doing far less collateral damage,” a phrase that is used to justify the
killing of innocents both here and broad. Perhaps the damage isn’t
“collateral,” but endemic to our racist society.

And, ah yes: without the police, black neighborhoods are terrible
places - hence, almost any collateral damage is or will be acceptable. Of
course, with the police, they are or resemble occupied, apartheid spaces. I’m
with the Young, Gifted, and Black Coalition in Madison on this one. As Hedges
pointed out, the police killings will not stop even when the
“professionalization” of the police has taken place because that violence is
endemic to our racist society and embraced by our establishment, both “left”
and “right,” ala’ the mass incarceration facilitated by Bill Clinton, et. al.

But, boy, it sure must feel good to have good things to say about a
book lays bare, allegedly, life in “the ghetto” - another “dog whistle” phrase
- and yet ends endorsing more of the same. And this is oh so comfortable: Life
in “the ghetto” isn’t our - that is, middle, upper middle, upper class
people - problem after all. The police will deal with it and we can go on with
our comfortable lives.

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Hillary has
claimed she “misspoke” when she asserted that half of Trump’s supporters were
“deplorables,” They are “The racist, sexist, homophobic,
xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it.” But she only misspoke if we ignore how
her characterization of some of Trump’s supporters is quite consistent
with- and thereby reminds us of – the
origins of what is called “Progressivism.”

The
Progressive movement began as an effort to “cleanse” or “purify” American
society, an effort that required regulating, managing, and even sterilizing
those people(s) who were threatening the “healthy” people(s), viz., white,
Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The threat was two-fold: First, the healthy people
were in danger of committing was called “race suicide,” and they should, as
Teddy Roosevelt asserted, “Work, fight, breed!” Second, the unhealthy people
had to be controlled as they threatened to overwhelm the healthy people by
winning the “battle of the cradle.” And to win that battle, many Progressives
were led to support eugenics, including Margaret Sanger, the feminist, who
proposed sterilizing entire “disugenic” populations in order to prevent the
birth of “hordes of defectives,” as Teddy Roosevelt’s advisor on “inferior
races” put it. Such thinking culminated in the Supreme Court case of Buck v. Bell, where Justice Holmes, in
upholding Virginia’s compulsory sterilization law, claimed “It is better for
the world if. . . .society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from
continuing their kind….Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

The
“defectives” included Jews, Catholics, blacks, the Chinese, etc., etc., etc. As
Roosevelt’s advisor on “inferior races” put it: “You can’t make boy scouts out
of the Jews.” And a Baptist missionary manual claimed that the lower classes
and races were characterized by “Low living, low intelligence, low morality,
low capacity, low everything.” And as one well-known zoologist put it: “the
mixture of two races reverts to the lower type [so] the cross between a white
man and a Negro is a Negro, a white man and a Hindi is a Hindi, and the cross
between any of the three European races and a Jew is a Jew.” [All quotes are
from Hellfire Nation, by James A.
Morone.]

There
is a dark side to progressivism, a racist, xenophobic, and sexist side, and
Hillary’s use of the word “deplorables,” just like her use of the words “super
predator” to describe “inner city male youths,” should remind us of this fact.
Our national policy of mass incarceration, which received quite a boost from
Bill Clinton, is not an aberration. Rather, it is a policy quite consistent
with a “progressive frame of mind,” one that does not and cannot inoculate its
bearers from racist, xenophobic, or sexist policies because it is, ultimately,
“the other” who threatens us, creating a politics of fear that in turn
facilitates hatred, a hatred that breeds oppression and justifies inhuman
policies like torture, the killing of innocents labeled “collateral damage,” and
endless wars. Remember Roosevelt’s admonition: “Work, fight, breed!”

The
bottom line? It is not enough for Hillary to say she “misspoke.” She needs to
repudiate her assertion and explain why. But this she will not and cannot do
because it would mean repudiating her progressive politics, and she has no idea
why she or anyone needs to do that.

Sunday, September 11, 2016

Trump and
Hillary are sounding more and more alike, with the latter of late sounding a
lot like Trump in claiming that half of Trump’s supporters are “deplorables,”
implying of course that Trump himself is “deplorable.” And, of course, Trump
has long talked about Hillary’s supporters and others in similar ways.But why should this concern us? After all,
isn’t this just “business or politics as usual?”

It is
useful to distinguish between claims of “merit” and claims of “superiority.”
Politicians may claim that they “merit” an office, here, the presidency; or
they can claim that they are “superior” to their opponents. And this is not a
difference without a distinction. And, currently, it is the latter claim of
being superior that is being made by both Trump and Clinton. Each is claiming
his or her superiority to the other and not claiming that she or he merits
being president. So when Clinton claims that Trump is “unfit” to be president
or that his supporters are “deplorable,” her implicit claim is that “I,
Hillary, am superior to Trump and my supporters are superior to his
supporters.” And Trump makes the same, implicit claims.

Now, such
claims make the candidates’ rhetoric and campaign more intense, more personal
than these would be were the candidates to claim that they merited the
presidency. “Proving” or demonstrating one’s superiority to another requires
that this other be shown to be inferior; that is, shown to be an inferior human
being, a human being who is not entitled to the equality that comes from a
recognition of commonality, a recognition of sameness. That “half” of Trump’s
supporters who are “deplorable” should not be entitled to participate in our
politics, just as the “47%” of Obama’s supporters that Mitt Romney called out
in 2012 should not have been entitled to such participation. Conversely,
though, debating one’s merits does not require the superior/inferior paradigm.
My merits may be judged independently of your merits, whereas my claimed
superiority requires your inferiority. “I am fit but you are unfit!”

This distinction
is crucial in a republic founded on the claim that all are created equal. Basing
one’s claim to rule or govern on merit is consistent with such republicanism,
while basing one’s claim to rule or govern on superiority is not. For if
officials think that they govern because they are superior to those being
governed, then they can claim to govern independently of “the consent of the
governed.” Their superiority justifies severing the link between them and that
consent, which is of course the basis of all legitimate government power. And,
further, without consent, there is no politics. There is only administration or
bureaucracy and the disempowerment of “we the people.”

Insofar as
Trump and Clinton are claiming the right to govern us because they are superior,
just so far they are claiming the right to govern without regard to “the
consent of the governed.” They might take this consent into account but they do
so only as a matter of accommodation, not as the essence of republican or
popular government. Conversely, were they to base their claim to govern on
their merits, they could do so only with our consent because claims to govern
based on merit do not subvert the kind of commonality between the governing and
the governed that lies at the core of republican or popular government. Claims to
govern based on superiority do subvert both the commonality and the equality
needed by and aspired to in republican societies. And insofar as Trump and
Clinton makes such claims based on their superiority, just so far each of them
has embraced an elitism that is unalloyed by a recognition of the human
sameness and it accompaniment, the affection or caring that should characterize
republican citizens and their governors.

In the
“corporate world,” a world populated by managers who seek to manipulate others
so as to increase the corporation’s and their own power, such caring, such
affection is or seems simply “idealistic.” But in the political world, at least
in a republican political world, such affection is not only indispensable but
is or should be the very essence of citizenship.

Sunday, September 4, 2016

“The past
isn’t dead. In fact, the past isn’t even the past.” Thanks to William Faulkner.
The future is a mystery to us because it is unknowable. But so too is the
present mysterious because we cannot know the future or how the present will
play out.

So, we have
to ask: What is our present? What might it augur for the future? Many are
saying that this presidential election is crucial,
that it will determine the nation’s fate for some time to come. This is, of
course, conjecture and a conjecture based on the assumption that we are faced
with a choice between two competing, even incompatible options, with one those
options representing “progress” and the other representing “reaction.”

Leaving
aside the personal qualities – or lack thereof – of the two major parties’
candidates, this assessment assumes that our nation is “on the rise,” that it
is getting stronger, more secure, and freer; not that it is actually getting
weaker, less secure, and less free. If the latter is a more accurate picture of
our nation’s status and prospects, as most Americans seem to think, than the
idea that we are confronting a choice between “progress” and “reaction”
obscures the most important or what should be the most important issue: How do
we restore the nation’s health? To pose the choice as, “How do we continue our
progress?” when we are not and have not been progressing is to court, even
to guarantee, further failures. Or if we mistake superficialities – such as
electing the first black president or the first female president – for real
progress, we also facilitate or guarantee further failures.

One of my
favorite songs, from the soundtrack of the movie Crazy Heart, contains the line, “Funny how falling feels like
flying – for a little while.” While the argument that this presidential
election is crucial because our allegedly healthy political order faces a
reactionary threat is a comfortable argument to make, it is more likely that we
are in danger of thinking that we are flying when, in fact, we are falling. And
if this is the case, then once again the slogan, “Yes We Can!” will morph into
the slogan “No We Can’t!” Looking back to 2008 confirms that “falling feels
like flying.” It is also confirms that it feels that way only “for a little while.”

Monday, August 29, 2016

It is
frustrating dealing with so many people, usually the “respectable,” who feel or
think that it is not “respectable” or “prudent” to vote for those they consider
marginal candidates, those like the nominees of the Green Party or the
Libertarian Party, those who have no chance to win. So, it is concluded, better
to vote for one of the candidates put forward by our two “major” parties, even
though that means voting for someone who is “the lesser of two evils.”

As
“respectable” and “prudent” as this strategy appears to be, it overlooks a
singular fact of political or communal life, viz., that change, significant
change, only comes after people,
especially people in groups or in large numbers, step out. Stepping out,
that is, rejecting in one way or another the established order, even in what
seems like and what are presently losing causes, is the key to fomenting
significant political, social, or economic change. And without this stepping
out, the status quo, no matter how unsatisfactory it might be, not only
continues but is fortified. That lesser evil becomes a greater evil.

Think about
it. The conservatives in the Republican party stepped out in the 60’s, by
nominating Barry Goldwater who was then defeated in a landslide by LBJ. Yet, in
1980, Ronald Reagan, who first came to the nation’s attention by means of his
speech supporting Goldwater at the 1964 Republican convention, was elected
president in 1980. Al Smith in 1928, a “wet” Catholic and a New Yorker to boot,
after being nominated by the Democrats, went down to a landslide defeat to
Herbert Hoover, only to help prepare the way for the election of FDR in 1932.

Stepping
out, African Americans in the 60’s lit a blaze that became the civil rights
revolution of the 60’s, which included the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the
Voting Rights Act of the same year. Stepping out, women banned their bras, took
the pill, and generally reclaimed their bodies, their selves at about the same
time. Stepping out or “coming out,” gays and lesbians chanted, “We’re here,
we’re queer, and we’d like to hello!” And now gay and lesbian marriage is the
law of the land and no longer can gays and lesbians be punished criminally for
who they are or what they do.

This is why
the supporters of Bernie Sanders were right to feel betrayed or “burned” when
Sanders, unlike them, refused to step out against Hillary Clinton and the
Democratic establishment. No stepping out, no change; just more of the same
kind of politics we have had to live with since at least the presidential
election of 1992, a politics that has enriched the wealthiest Americans and
impoverished the middle and lower classes, while keeping us involved in what
have been endless wars. No stepping out, no change. It’s just a fact of
political or communal life.

Every vote not
for Clinton or Trump represents a stepping out and, as such, each such vote
undermines the status quo. So, show some smarts. Step out in November. As was
once said, you have nothing to lose but your chains.